We Can’t Climb This Mountain Alone
You might know by now that I’m a big fan of the great outdoors. If you listened to our Gender in Focus Podcast episode on the love of being out in nature, you’ll know I’ve recently been getting into glacier travel. For my birthday, my parents (shout out to Gail and James who inspired my love of the alpine) generously gifted me a guided attempt to summit Mount Baker (3,287m). This involved trekking across the Easton Glacier, roped up with a team of three complete strangers, and I was lucky enough to spend a recent weekend diving into this experience.
Now, before I go on, I should jump right to the end of the story with a spoiler: we didn't quite reach the top. Whiteout conditions and an avalanche risk meant we had to stop just shy of the summit. While I may have missed out on some truly incredible mountain-top views, I gained some powerful insights about the pace of social change from this experience, and I'd love to share them with you here.
Glaciers and Social Change
So, back to the glacier. When you’re travelling roped up, you have to let go of the notion of being an individual. You're not a group of individuals exploring a glacier; you’re actually moving as one - your pace, your balance and your missteps all affect the whole group. For the system to work, everyone has to find a rhythm together. Any variation - if one of you is moving even slightly too fast or too slow - and the whole setup disintegrates pretty quickly.
As I mentioned, I was roped up with people I had never hiked with before - I was right in the middle, with someone in front of me and someone behind. It wasn't long into our trek across the Easton Glacier that I noticed my eagerness to go faster than the people around me and, as I’m sure you can guess, this did not go smoothly.
The first thing that happened? The rope between me and the person in front of me got really loose as my speed moved me closer to them. This led to me stepping on the rope with my crampons and tripping - a risky move, as that rope is what pulls us out of a crevasse if one of us falls in. Simultaneously, my forward speed meant the person behind me was getting left behind, and the rope was pulling too tightly. This caused me to waste precious energy fighting against the pull. Ultimately, the lesson I learned here was that in pushing forward and attempting to go faster… I actually ended up slowing all of us down while exhausting myself in the process.
Finding a collective pace
For so many of us who deeply care about social change, that feeling of being tied in the middle, eager to go faster, is a really familiar one. For those of us who are part of marginalized communities, or who care deeply about them, that visceral need to move faster is ingrained. We see the risks, the pain, the urgency - and we want change now.
The problem is… we are roped together. All of us - our communities and the communities of the people around us - are impacted by the speed at which we collectively move. When we push too hard or pull too fast, we end up causing setbacks while losing vital energy pulling people who simply can’t meet the pace. We risk tripping on our own rope.
I think we’re in an era where, especially when it comes to trans issues, we’re being called to find a new kind of rhythm - one that honours both urgency and attunement. This doesn’t mean we need to slow down to the point of stalling, nor does it mean compromising on human rights or the dignity trans people deserve. It just means finding ways to keep moving forward together - asking questions, getting curious, taking a momentary rest to refuel, and learning what others need in order to keep walking with us.
We didn’t reach the summit of Mount Baker that day, but I walked away with something I didn’t expect: clarity on how I want to move through the world. I want to be part of a rope team that meets each other where we are, that values flow over force, and ultimately, one that can move with intention to keep inching, step by step by step, towards the peak.
